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User blog:Netscapenavigaytor/Pokepasta Reviews
well. maybe it's not bright to make a post asking "hey is this a good idea" and upon getting two people not telling me it's a BAD idea, immediately jump the gun and do it either way, but here i am :D for those who hadn't read my previous post (which i assume is most of you, i only made it like 5 hours ago!), these reviews are primarily going to focus on the popular, well known names. you're allowed to request your own, but please be prepared for critique! to avoid clogging this wiki to hell and back, i'm just going to put all the reviews in this blog post, editing it whenever i've got a new one. Pokemon Creepy Black Read It Yourself First: Pokemon Creepy Black (yes, i know i linked the regular creepypasta wiki, but the page for this pasta on this wiki is kinda messy!) feels kinda wrong to do anything else first, huh? to a lot of people (including me), Creepy Black kinda felt like *the* Haunted Cartridge pasta, the birthplace of a hundred thousand imitators to come. some consider it a representative of "when creepypasta was still good." but... ah, without the lens of nostalgia most people find it incredibly bland, and i hate to say i'm one of those people :( the contents of the cartridge itself are remarkably unimpressive. you've got your Lavender Town ghost, you've got your murdering other pokemon and trainers, you've got your guilt trip reel while a creepy song from the game plays, and then your trainer gets killed and the save deletes. it's almost hard to talk about with how fomulaic it is, but at the same time can i blame the story that CREATED the formula for having it? this story's greatest strength is also its fatal flaw. Creepy Black is written in a style you pretty much never see anymore - it's more of a "hey, here's this weird game i have" deal than a story, and it's completely within the realm of capability for rom hacks. in the time it was posted, in its original context, i don't doubt that it was more of a thought provoking "huh, what a morbid game - who would make something like that?" but this was before Pokemon creepypasta was widespread. as an urban legend, Pokemon Creepy Black was a mystery, a story that left you wondering if it was true. as a creepypasta... well, not so much. and (at leastt partially) due to Creepy Black and its many imitators, horror Pokemon ROM hacks - Creepy Black or otherwise - are incredibly common, even as cartridge reproductions. the "who would make something like this?" question no longer stands, because we know the answer and it's "someone who likes creepypasta." so... the method of storytelling that gave it an edge in its original climate ends up making it feel dry, formulaic, and detached in our modern context of reading creepypastas as stories rather than rumors. if it's not one of your first creepypastas, you'll probably find it pretty forgettable because even many of the worse hacked ROM 'pastas have more going on in them. to be honest? i feel really bad slamming this story, and i feel even worse that i have more to say about its original context than the story itself! it kind of feels like i'm desecrating a pillar of my childhood, to be honest. but Creepy Black is more a victim of many old iconic creepypastas no longer standing the test of time in the face of competition than any sort of representative of even its own quality. (ironically, i currently have an unfinished spin-off of this pasta on the backburner... i need to get back to that at some point) Rating: ?/10 it doesn't really feel fair to rate this one :'( Strangled Red Read It Yourself First: Strangled Red aaaaalright, lemme get this out of my system first: MISSINGNO DOESN'T WORK LIKE THAT, THERE ARE OTHER GLITCH POKEMON THAT ARE MORE THEMATICALLY APPROPRIATE, AND MISSINGNO IS ACTUALLY REALLY HARMLESS. now that i've gotten the part nobody but me has EVER cared about out of the way... i like the story this 'pasta is trying to tell. i like the good ol' "played god to bring back an old friend but they came back Wrong" plot (can you believe i wrote To Meet Again before i even read this one?) it's a good story about a trainer spiraling into a self-destructive depression at the peak of his life and snapping horrifically because of it. aaand, before i get into what i feel holds it back, i'll talk about specific things i like about it. first off: the "red's brother who was champion before him but resigned due to circumstance" is REALLY cool and interesting as a main character. i don't know if it's true, but i heard in development of the gen 1 games Red WAS supposed to have a brother. lucky coincidence, or inspiration? either way, the prequel angle the 'pasta takes is a neat one that you don't see too often, and aside from its ending (which i can handwave because creepypasta) it's kinda plausible, even. secondly, despite my brief missingno rant earlier, i actually DO like how missingno was used in this. (mostly.) the "mine..." and Steven just HAS it now was kinda hokey, but if you're gonna put Missingno in your creepypasta as a powerful entity, doing it as a strange but controllable force of nature that bends the laws of reality just enough for things to be Wrong is the way to do it. it kinda got brushed aside as soon as it resurrected Miki, though... third, it balances tragedy and horror pretty well for what it is, and often is both at the same time. i never feel that it's leaning too far in the sadpasta direction, as even the part where Steven is mourning has a horrifying undertone to it and builds tension towards the ending. but at the same time, the horror elements feel like a logical (in terms of storytelling!! PLEASE don't use eldritch monsters to revive your pets!!!!!!) progression from the sad parts, rather than a "OH YEAH this is horror! WHAPOW!!!!" suckerpunch. definitely does it better than any of my own attempts at sad creepypastas :D buuuuuut... now it's time for the big, cliche elephant in the room: the framing device. WHY is this a HACKED CARTRIDGE pasta?! i've seen pastas here and there that really feel like they shouldn't've been hacked game stories (Abandon Lonliness comes to mind), but this one i feel suffers from that setup the most, and nearly every weakness of this pasta is a side effect of this framing device. the first problem? the narrator. they are completely and utterly POINTLESS. i have a bit of a pet peeve of "powerless narrators that serve only to tell the audience when they should be sad or scared", but that's a neccessary evil sometimes. not this time. the narrator has NO influence over the course of the story, and only really serves to react to things. the story beats would be exactly the same if anyone else was playing it - hell, TWITCH PLAYS POKEMON could be playing it and the story would be the same! so why does it need to be a hackrom with a third party narrator? then there's the problem of it being a hacked cartridge at all. i know some may look at in-world pokepastas or darkfic and think "Oh, just a Pokemon fanfic made by a morbid person." but by framing it as a haunted cartridge you are making it "just a morbid fanfic" WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF THE STORY, which is much, much worse. plus, the game mechanics do NOT play nice with the story being told, and serve no purpose other than to remind you "hey, this is a hacked rom!" (and the tirade at the beginning about romhack creepypastas.... uuuugh) but far more glaring than what the hackrom framing device ADDS is what it takes away... by using a third party narrator, the perfect excuse is made to glaze over the actual pokemon journey and shy away from showing us Steven's (or anyone else actually in the story) inner thoughts in favor of the inconsequential Real World Person. it turns the whole thing into a glaring case of Tell, Don't Show... we don't get to see any of Steven or Miki's friendship before her death, but it's okay! narrator said Miki was real strong in video game battles so that's how we know how close they were! it's nearly inevitable, but haunted game 'pastas always seem to have a level of detachment to the in-game story, and for a pokepasta which is pretty much ALL in-game story, that's basically a death knell. (as one last nitpick, the author LOVES their ellipses...) so, i really want to like this pokepasta more than i do, but being a hacked cartridge pasta really dents much of what it has going for it. i don't even have anything against hackrom pastas - it's just that the author tried to fit a round peg in a square hole, and when it didn't fit they started hacking parts of the peg off. :( Rating: 6/10 it tried, man EDIT: honestly im gonna say that while i still have the same criticisms i feel like i was maybe too hard on this one tbh. maybe more of a 7 or 8/10 bc like... i still like the plot a lot more Category:Blog posts